Earlier this month, the Nielsen Company released its quarterly statistics on television viewership in the U.S. The results? Americans are watching more TV than ever — more than four hours per day on average.
And if Americans are watching more TV, you can guess what they are doing less of — reading.
Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 spend just seven minutes per day reading for pleasure, according to a 2007 report by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Now I’m not going to pass judgment on the people involved in the survey. This is America, damn it, and one of our God-given rights is to be unproductive with our disposable time.
But that won’t stop me from feeling sorry for them. They clearly haven’t discovered how to
waste their time effectively. They haven’t discovered StumbleUpon.
StumbleUpon is the Pandora for the Internet. You install it on your Web browser, tell it
which areas interest you and it starts recommending Web pages. You tell it whether you liked the site or not, and StumbleUpon begins profiling your interests to recommend better sites for you to visit.
The result is an endless stream of relevant and interesting pages from around the Web.
Depending on how you have your interests set, you will find that the sites you come across are genuinely attuned to your tastes. StumbleUpon sifts through the huge amount of information on the Internet to bring users quality and relevant information.
Naturally, it can be pretty addicting. Instead of taking breaks from work to watch television, I’ve found myself Stumbling in short breaks. It has essentially been a substitute for my normal television viewing.
Even though I substitute watching television with StumbleUpon, it’s not a fair trade. Stumbling isn’t just another form of entertainment — it makes me a better person.
Although Stumbling will bring you across a wide range of mediums — including pictures and video — much of what you come across on the Web requires reading. There is something to be said about engaging in “active” entertainment over just having sounds and images thrown at you.
And it’s not like everything you come across has to be high-brow New Yorker articles. Even if you’re reading a blog about how to become a vampire to make all your Twilight friends jealous, your eyes passing over words will keep you mentally sharp.
To be fair, television can also be an effective medium for communicating important ideas and making people think. There should certainly be a distinction between watching Charlie Rose interview Warren Buffet and witnessing the downward spiral of B-list celebrities.
I’ve always been a proponent of using well-made documentaries to teach lessons. Film can often communicate a well-organized and engaging message that simply can’t be done on paper.
Still, it’s hard to believe Americans are spending their four hours each day watching Ken Burns-quality programing.
We shouldn’t get too down on ourselves though. Even though there have been a lot of doomsday prognostications about the decline of reading, we need to recognize that while traditional types of reading may be going out, there are also new opportunities to engage people and make them think.
Here’s a suggestion — What if we made elementary students stumble through PBS’s Web site everyday after recess? Such a policy would be fun, educational and would foster curiosity — a quality which needs to be instilled into all the little ones coming through the education system.
In a world with DVR and video games, expecting everyone to have read and enjoyed Pride and Prejudice is a bit optimistic. Instead we should be doing everything we can to increase reading — whatever the source — in our society.
Mark Macmurdo is a 22-year-old history and economics senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_mmacmurdo.
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Contact Mark Macmurdo at mmacmurdo@lsureveille.com
Murda, He Wrote: StumbleUpon may save America from decline to illiteracy
Published: Thursday, December 3, 2009
Updated: Thursday, December 3, 2009
19 comments
I once stumbled on a page that said " stumbleupon is now closed. Go walk your dog, take a shower and eat breakfast"The SU community is and interesting one and SU seems to be pretty fee of politics, unless you drill down to that horrid subject.
Either way, I like the article and the fact that other people realize how great a source of information the internet can be, if you use it right.